Sweep Account Set Up

Hi there, kattu2km.

I'm here to help you set up a sweep account and record its transactions in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT).

If it's a money market, you can easily create a bank account in QBDT to represent it. This way, you will have both your business checking account and your money market account properly set up. To accurately reflect the transfers between these two accounts, you can simply record them in QuickBooks. If both accounts are connected to online banking, the Bank Feed feature will automatically capture these transfers for you.

Regarding the sweep account, if it functions as a regular cash account, you only need to enter the transactions and reconcile the cash balance at the end of each month based on the statement provided.

To do this properly, I suggest consulting your accountant or accounting professional for further guidance with the process. Visit this link if you don't have an accountant yet: QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor.

Moreover, I recommend performing a reconciliation on a regular basis to ensure your account is balanced and accurate. Refer to this article for future reference: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop.

Please post again if you have follow-up questions about this or anything else. I'm always here to assist. Stay safe.

I am not sure why I cannot reconcile my account and then tie into a sweep account.  Can you please me with this I am a desk top user not on line.

Good day, @Sky Hi.

I would like to get to the bottom of this and lay down some solutions to help you reconcile accounts and tie them into a sweep account.

Before anything else, I want to ask a few questions to provide some troubleshooting steps. First, what challenges are you experiencing to reconcile? Is there any error that prevents you from doing so? Can you provide a screenshot?

More details would definitely help us narrow down the issue. Looking forward to your reply.

Good morning!  We started doing the nightly bank sweep in September as well.  Were you able to figure out how to set up and reconcile both the checking account and the new sweep account in QuickBooks?  

Were you able to figure out how to set up a sweep account?  Do you add it as a fixed asset or bank account?  I'm not sure how to reconcile the regular bank account now that we have the sweep account.  The ending balance is always zero on our regular checking bank statement and the sweep account statement shows the correct amount give or take a few dollars.  There has to be a way to tie the two accounts together.  

I've got the steps to help you manage your sweep account in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT), 

Beforehand, I want to ensure that I can address each of your concerns individually. Let's work together to identify and resolve them one by one. 

In setting up a sweep account, we can choose from several types of accounts, but the best is a bank account due to the following reasons: 

• You can pay into a bank account via Receive Payments or Make Deposits.
• You can pay out a bank account via Write Checks or Pay Bills.
• A bank account appears on the balance sheet and the statement of cash flows to balances and changes in balances.
• To allocate expenses to overhead or class using a zero check, you must use a bank account as your Clearing account.

To set up a sweep account, follow the mentioned steps: 

1. Go to the Lists menu and select Chart of Accounts.
2. Right-click anywhere in the Chart of Accounts, then select New.
3. In the Add New Account window, select the Bank radio button.
4. Hit Continue.
5. From the Account Name section, enter Clearing Account, Barter Account, or Wash Account.
6. Do NOT enter an opening balance.
7. Click Save & Close.

Concerning the reconciliation process with the regular bank account, now that you've set up a sweep account, I recommend consulting your accountant to ensure an accurate process. 

Here's an article for more details: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop. 

With regard to the sweep account having a correct balance, this is due to it being a temporary account. On occasions, the balance is zero, and sometimes it's not. It depends on whether you have used the funds you stored. 

Also, you mentioned you want to tie both accounts together. However, linking a regular account and a sweep account isn't possible.

In addition, I've added this guide about how to look for issues for accounts you haven't reconciled before in QBDT: Fix issues the first time you reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online. 

Feel free to post here or leave a reply if you have additional concerns about setting up a sweep account in QBDT. Have a good one! 

To "tie them together" couldn't you just make the sweep account a sub of the original account?

Hi OneWorldGeo,

I'm here to share more information about linking a sweep account to an original account.

Since QuickBooks Online spontaneously detects entries, we're unable to tie together the sweep account to it since it can't automatically track transactions.

With that, it's advisable to set up the sweep account as a separate one so you can process the fund from the original account to sweep and vice versa. However, I'd suggest reaching out to your accountant on how you can set up the sweep account as a sub-account.

Moreover, I've added this article as your guide in ensuring your accounts match your bank and credit card statements: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop.

I'm just around whenever you have banking concerns.